


I Know the End

by ongreenergrasses



Series: I walked out of the fire alive; how can that be? [1]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern: No Powers, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Chronic Pain, Dealing With Trauma, Developing Relationships, Drug Addiction, Found Family, Grief/Mourning, Hopeful Ending, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Mild Sexual Content, Multi, albeit poorly at times, lads we may not be here for a good time necessarily. but it'll be a time, me? projecting my own trauma onto these characters? more likely than you think
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-02
Updated: 2021-02-03
Packaged: 2021-03-13 07:54:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 18,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29150025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ongreenergrasses/pseuds/ongreenergrasses
Summary: After Lykon died, they all fell apart in six distinct spirals. But thankfully, Joe was too stubborn to stay at rock bottom for long, and he was going to drag them all back up with him.Or grief, what it does to people, and how to move forward. Eventually.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Series: I walked out of the fire alive; how can that be? [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2141562
Comments: 40
Kudos: 49
Collections: The Old Guard Big Bang





	1. prologue

**Author's Note:**

> please mind the tags! if i am missing any please let me know and i will add accordingly, but there should be no surprises.

It started like this.

Joe had been at work, he was working in finance back in those days. (It hadn’t been that long ago. He still referred to it mentally as ‘back in those days’.) He’d gone into the field due to some pressure from his family, yes, but mostly because of pressure he put on himself. Because pure math wasn’t a career, he had thought, any more than art was a career. It was a shame, because he loved both art and pure math, and he always thought in the back of his mind that he might’ve been able to find a career that sort of combined the two if he’d only looked a little bit harder, and he certainly did not love the monotony of a 9 to 5 and having to wear a button down and slacks every day. But such were the sacrifices people made.

He’d kept his phone on do not disturb during the day back then, mostly because Nile always sent memes to their groupchat during her office hours (undergrads never showed up for those, but they still paid her by the hour to host them and she could use the extra money) and Quýnh always responded to them immediately (she was a pianist, and a very good pianist at that, but she also had a low attention span and got distracted while practicing). It wasn’t easy to focus when the phone was constantly buzzing away on his desk but Joe also didn’t want to turn it off completely, just wanted to make it a little more difficult for people to contact him. When his phone had actually rung that day, he just about fell out of his chair. As soon as he’d collected himself, he saw that it was Nicky’s name lighting up the screen.

“Nicky, I’m at work, can you call me in two hours?”

At first, Joe hadn’t been able to understand what was even happening, but then he heard sirens and shouting and over it all, Nicky’s panicked voice, shouting in Italian too fast for Joe to make it out. “Nicky, babe, I need you to breathe. Take a breath and tell me in English.”

“There was an accident, there was – where are we going?” It sounded like he had pulled the phone away from his ear, there was a muffled conversation, and Joe spent enough energy trying to focus on what he could figure out about the situation that he could almost ignore the coldness of dread seeping up from his toes. “They say Mount Sinai but I don’t know which one, I don’t even know where we are, I - ”

“Breathe, babe,” Joe said again. He was already on his feet, shoving his things back into his bag and grabbing his jacket. “I need you to tell me exactly what happened.”

“We were on the way to this restaurant, we were going to go there before my shift started, I can’t even – I can’t think, Joe, I don’t know where he is, he was driving - ”

“Is Lykon with you?”

“No, no, he’s in another ambulance, it doesn’t matter.”

“Why doesn’t it matter?” Nicky was yelling at someone that was in the ambulance with him. He was in an ambulance, which meant that he was hurt, and fuck, how badly was he hurt? How badly was Lykon hurt? “Nicky! Why doesn’t it matter where he is?”

But even then. Thinking back on it, Joe had known even then. As soon as Nicky had said that they had been driving, Joe had known who he was with and what had happened, because only Lykon had a car. As soon as Nicky had called, maybe, Joe had known, because Nicky wouldn’t have bothered him at work. They’d talked about it a couple weeks ago, jokingly. Nicky, who was still half asleep because he’d had to cover the overnight shift, had insisted on clinging to Joe like a limpet as he was trying to get out the door. Joe had been needling him about being so needy and told Nicky not to call him at work because he’d never be able to focus afterwards if he was thinking about Nicky, and Nicky had kissed him goodbye and then said quite seriously that he wouldn’t call, he would never call, unless someone was dead or dying.

“Lykon’s dead.” Nicky had said it so bluntly, all those months ago. “I watched him die.”

Joe breathed. Nicky breathed.

“We’re going to Mount Sinai in Brooklyn,” Nicky said, and then hung up.

[](https://www.flickr.com/photos/191813101@N02/50896787663/in/album-72157718119454578/)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> art by [andromachete](https://andromachete.tumblr.com/)


	2. six months later

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the art for this has been created by the incredible, amazing, astounding [andromachete](https://andromachete.tumblr.com/), who has so kindly created beautiful work on very short notice. many thanks also must go to iamfool, if he is to stumble across this, for the unending moral support and kindness.

[](https://www.flickr.com/photos/191813101@N02/50897503561/in/album-72157718119454578/)[](https://www.flickr.com/photos/191813101@N02/50897502411/in/album-72157718119454578/)

It was a pretty normal day. Joe went to work, he was in enough pain that he couldn’t really focus on what happened at work, just thought of the pain, this dull ache and dull roar that clouded out everything. He went in early so he could leave early, thought about quitting for the umpteenth time on his way back to the apartment, and by the time he got back Nile was still at work but Booker was asleep on the couch.

Joe dropped his bag with a thump. Book startled awake and nearly fell off the sofa.

“How the fuck did you get in here,” Joe said. By now, he was too resigned to Book’s many inexplicable appearances in their apartment to bother making it into a question.

“Eh,” Booker said, waving a hand unhelpfully. He was clearly drunk, so Joe preemptively gave up on getting any information of value out of him and went into the kitchen to start dinner. Nile kept her work and class schedule tidily pinned to the fridge, which showed that she would be home that night at a relatively reasonable time, and Quýnh, who was a little less organized, had spelled out ‘NO WORK’ using the letter magnets on the fridge, which meant that Joe was effectively cooking for anywhere between three to five people. It was anyone’s guess if Booker was eating, so Joe always just made extra for him, and Andy was hard to keep track of on any given day but Joe knew that they were at least in town right now, so it was entirely possible that they would also show up and expect to be fed. Their apartment only had the one couch and one armchair and Book normally had a standing claim to the couch but Andy was also far scarier than Book, so it was anyone’s guess who would sleep where. (Quýnh slept in Nile’s bed with her and had done so for the last couple months. The last couple of months had taught Joe to not ask any extra questions about – anything, really.)

Joe had just started dicing onions when his phone went off at top volume, accompanied by a round of drowsy French cursing from the living room as the noise startled Book awake. Very few people ever called Joe and when he got a call, it was always bad news of a varying degree, so he was at this point pathologically programmed to respond to that phone with a skyrocketing heart rate. He fumbled to answer the phone before any more time passed and the call dropped, or worse yet he dropped dead of anxiety. It wasn’t a phone number that he recognized, which meant that either Andy had been arrested at a different precinct than normal, his coworker had gotten yet another new phone number and accidentally called him instead of texted, or Nile had gotten in some sort of accident. All three options were terrible. But Joe couldn’t afford to spiral any more than he already was, so he fumbled the phone, answered it, and wedged it back in between his ear and his shoulder so he could keep dicing onions.

“Hello?”

“Joe?”

Joe dropped the knife.

“Joe, can you hear me?”

“Yeah,” Joe rasped. “Yeah, I can hear you fine.” It took him a good thirty seconds to recover, to collect himself enough to do anything besides breathe and listen to the breathing and the background noise on the other side of the line. It was loud and there were people shouting – a party? A bar? It was predominately English but there was French mixed in – maybe Canada? 

“Nicky, where are you? Are you all right? Do you need help? I can send you money, I can send you groceries, or take out or something, do you need a bus ticket?” So much for remaining composed.

“Joe,” Nicky said, and he was laughing now, “no, no, I don’t need anything, I just wanted to call to ask how you were, Joe.”

Joe dropped his head into the palm of his hand so hard that he winced. “Nicky, you can’t – you can’t do that. It’s not fair.”

“Why not? I can’t ask how you are?”

“You’re high, aren’t you.” Joe sighed. “What did you take?”

“You don’t need to worry about me,” Nicky said earnestly, which was such a stupid statement that Joe didn’t bother to dignify it with a response, and instead static stretched out and crackled over the line between them.

“I called you because I have something important to tell you, Joe,” Nicky said finally. “I didn’t want to send you a text or something, it’s too important.”

“Okay. What did you want to tell me?”

“This is my last time. This is it, I’m gonna get clean after this, Joe, this time I mean it, I promise. I’m going to get out of here and straighten myself out, cold turkey. A clean break.”

“No, darling, don’t do that,” Joe said before he could help himself. “If you’re going to get clean come home. Come stay with us, we’ll help you. Or we’ll take you somewhere. Don’t do it by yourself, we can make sure that you’ll be okay. We can take care of you.”

“I don’t want you to see me like that,” Nicky said. “I don’t – it’s – I’m not – I don’t want you to see me going through that.” Joe didn’t know if he’d taken another hit during one of those silences or just called right after he’d used and it was just now kicking in, but Nicky was obviously getting too disjointed to talk for much longer. “You deserve better, I want to be good for you. I want to be better for you.”

“Nicky,” Joe said helplessly, “it’s not about deserving, we’re your family. You can always come home and we’ll take care of you. I’ll send you a ticket, we love you.”

“Do you love me?”

Joe couldn’t answer that for too long. One second, two seconds. Four. Five. “Of course I do,” he said finally. “Of course I love you. We all love you.”

“I can’t – I have to go,” and before Joe could say anything else, or think about something better to say, or do something to stop him or get a way to contact him or anything, Nicky had hung up the phone.

Joe hit redial. The phone rang, and rang, and went to voicemail. He tried again. It went to voicemail.

It always happened like this.

Nicky had taken off six months ago, leaving behind an empty apartment, his job as a paramedic, and all of them. Andy was the one who found the drugs on the counter when they went to check his apartment, using the spare key that Joe still had, and Booker was the one who had wept and raged. And Joe…Joe had felt nothing at all. Nicky hadn’t even left a note.

Nile found Joe there, staring at the partially diced onion, when she came back from work half an hour later. He heard her shout a confused greeting to Booker (and really, if she hadn’t let him in on her way to work, Joe was a little concerned about how he’d gotten into the apartment) and heard him tell Nile he was in the kitchen.

“Joe? Joe, what happened?” Nile came to stand next to him and really, that was one of Joe’s favorite things about her – she never pushed, just came to the periphery of someone’s space to offer her support. He noticed his hand was shaking ever so slightly on the counter. She reached out and rested her hand on top of his, interlaced their fingers when he didn’t pull away. “Is someone hurt?”

“Nicky called,” Joe said, and he sounded far too normal for the magnitude of that statement. There was a crash from the kitchen doorway. Booker had dropped his water glass, it shattered everywhere.

“What the fuck?” he rasped.

“Oh my god, is he all right? Where is he?” Nile was scrambling to pull her phone out of her purse, presumably to call Andy. “Why did he call?”

“He says he’s getting clean,” Joe said. He was tired, he was so, so tired, and his back hurt. He needed to sit down. He used the last of his energy to collapse onto one of the bar stools along their countertop. “He didn’t tell me where he was but I heard English and French, so maybe Quebec. I know he’s been there before.”

“He needs to come back,” Booker said immediately. Booker had his fair share of issues. He’d been clean for four years. “He needs some sort of support.”

“I don’t think he wants to come back,” Joe said. “I told him that he could come home, that we would help, but he kept talking about how we all deserved better and how he doesn’t want us to see him like this.” He dropped his face into his hands. Nile was speaking urgently to Andy, her voice getting fainter as she disappeared into her bedroom.

“Christ, Joe.” Booker sat down heavily next to him and clapped a hand on his shoulder. The waves of whiskey rolling off him were so strong that Joe reflexively wrinkled his nose. “God, he…”

“I know,” Joe said. There wasn’t much else to say. “I just – I don’t know how to explain to him that it’s not about deserving us, that we’re family, that we’ll be there for him.”

“Oh no, that’s not it,” Booker said sagely. He was remarkably coherent for the amount of alcohol he’d ingested. Joe lifted his head out of his heads, just so Book could fully see the skepticism that was definitely playing across his face. (Nicky had always said he was the most expressive out of all of them. That his face showed everything before he even felt it.) “He doesn’t think he deserves you, specifically.”

“Ugh,” Joe said.

“How many times has Nicky called to tell you this?” Nile stuck her head back around the doorframe.

“Five,” Joe said dully. He’d thought third time was the charm. But then again, what did he know.

“Okay, Andy, he says this is the fifth time, Jesus Christ - ” and Nile disappeared again.

“Must be serious for her to be swearing like that,” Joe said, but he was too tired for it to be anything but flat. Booker sat next to him and offered his customary stoic drunken silence, which was actually remarkably helpful.

“Andy’s coming over,” Nile said eventually, reemerging from the bedroom. “They want to go to Montreal to track him down, they know some of his old haunts.”

“I really don’t think that’s a good idea,” Joe said, “he won’t go with them and you know how good he is at disappearing.”

“I think Andy’s just tired of waiting and worrying,” Nile said, sliding onto the stool on Joe’s other side and resting her head on his shoulder.

“Aren’t we all,” Booker said dryly, and the three of them sat in silence until they heard Quýnh’s key in the front door. They could hear Andy ranting even through the door, and they pushed past Quýnh and into the living room, already yelling into their phone. Quýnh sighed, carefully stepping out of her heels. 

Joe couldn’t say exactly what happened for the rest of the night. Quýnh turned up her nose at the mess that had been in the kitchen and quickly scraped the onions Joe had abandoned into a Tupperware before carefully wiping down the counters and pulling up Doordash on her phone. Nile asked him what he wanted, and Joe answered something, but he couldn’t remember it a few minutes later. Nile eventually got up and went into her room, speaking quickly to Booker and trailing her fingers gently across both of their shoulders as she left. He heard Andy still shouting, but this time it was roiling and filled with worry and definitely directed at Quýnh, who was clearly trying to maintain her composure.

Book sat with him. He dragged the bottle of whiskey across the counter and started drinking straight from that, but otherwise, he sat with Joe, and he pushed the food in front of him and a fork and nudged his shoulder every time Joe stopped eating.

It wasn’t like Joe was going crazy with worry or anything like that. It was just – every time Nicky called, Joe got like this, stuck in his own head. Every time he called, all Joe could think of was the past calls he’d gotten that were terrible and heralded terrible things, and he couldn’t help but think about how it was entirely possible that every time Nicky called, it could be the last time anyone heard from him. And after Lykon this was something he knew acutely, so Joe felt hyperaware of every conversation he had, because he wanted Nicky to know that they loved him. Anyone would do the same. If Nicky called any of them, they would all say the same thing, albeit in their unique ways. But he always called Joe, and that meant that Joe was the one who had to carry the message, and equally, Joe would be the last point of contact, and maybe he was inflating his own sense of self-importance, but he didn’t know if whatever he said would stay with Nicky, and if so, for how long. He didn’t want Nicky’s last interaction with him to be marked by fighting, or yelling, or tears, even though…god.

He felt selfish, in the end. He felt selfish because he was thinking about himself, and what he wanted his image to be in Nicky’s eyes, and the one they needed to focus on, right now, was Nicky.

“Joe,” Andy said, not unkindly, and he blinked. He didn’t have a clue when they had taken Booker’s place – but no, Book was still next to him, just slumped over the counter now, asleep with his head pillowed on his crossed arms. Andy was on his other side, a hand on his shoulder. They had a backpack slung over their shoulder, they had changed their clothes. Joe didn’t want them to touch him for another second. He never wanted them to let go of him. “I’m gonna go. I wanted to say goodbye.”

“Where are you going, Andy.”

“Montreal,” they said. “I’m going to bring him back here or stay with him there. Whatever it takes.”

“Andy,” Joe said, and he didn’t want to sound so _broken_ , fuck this, “I don’t know if he wants that.”

“Fuck that,” Andy said. “He said he’s getting clean, right? He called you?”

“Yeah.”

“Then he wants you.”

“It isn’t that simple, Andy,” Joe said, and to his horror, he felt actual tears welling up in his eyes. “We can’t just - ”

“I know,” Andy said, and fuck, he hated how gentle they were being with him. “Joey, we all have to get better. But he also needs to get clean, and one of us has to go to help him, and I don’t know if it can be you.”

“Don’t call me that,” Joe said reflexively, and sniffed.

“You’re right, boss,” Booker said, which was a miracle, considering that about ten seconds ago he had been snoring. “I sure as shit can’t go.”

“Nile has an actual job,” Joe said. “But Quýnh - ”

“Is not coming,” Andy said firmly, and Joe realized immediately that it was better not to ask. “I’m going to Montreal.”

“Did you buy your ticket yet?” Joe asked. Once Andy decided to do something, there was no dissuading them, and it was better instead to focus on the practical.

“Eh,” Andy said unhelpfully, and then dragged the bottle of whiskey over so they could take an overly long swig from the bottle.

“I’ll buy it for you.”

“Joey,” Andy said again, in that too goddamn understanding voice of theirs, using that stupid nickname. Joe wanted to sock them.

“Please let me do this,” he said instead, because he was an adult and therefore able to control himself. Despite the fact that he wanted to punch them, very, very badly. “I can’t – I can at least do this.”

“Okay,” Andy said. “I fucking hate United, don’t buy me shit from that airline.”

“Okay.”

“Where’s your passport,” Book said. Andy swung the backpack around to their front so they could start digging around in it. They still had the whiskey bottle in their other hand. Book reached over to try and grab it, but Andy deftly held it out of reach.

“You’re cut off.”

“Like hell,” Book said, and grabbed for it again, nearly smacking his face on the counter. Joe picked the phone up out of reach so they could keep tussling in front of him.

“Andy, I need your passport.”

“Fuck off,” Andy said. “Give me that.” They snatched the phone from Joe before he could react.

Andy had a large and somewhat unexplainable obsession with keeping mundane personal details about themselves hidden. Joe didn’t know Andy’s last name. Come to think of it, he didn’t know their full first name, although one time Quýnh had jokingly called them ‘Andrea’ and subsequently had a death glare leveled at her. Andy would certainly never let any of them know things like when their passport expired, or what year they were born, or what country their passport was from.

They’d all met Andy at various points throughout their life, and every single one of them potentially had more questions than answers about Andy. But one unwavering thing was Andy’s commitment to them. Their love. It was present in everything they did. It was tough love, yes, but Joe never doubted how much they loved all of them, and maybe that was the reason he felt more settled about letting Andy go to Montreal. He wouldn’t want anyone else to go.

“Good job,” Andy said, handing the phone back. They’d kept their passport hidden behind their backpack as they filled out their information. “Needs your credit card. But I like Air Canada.”

“Of course you do,” Book said, making another grab for the whiskey bottle and succeeding this time. Andy glared at him.

“Go,” Joe said, sending a screenshot of the reservation to Andy. “Your flight leaves in two hours.”

“Fuck,” Andy said succinctly. They squeezed Booker tightly around the shoulders, then pulled Joe into a much softer and much more painful hug. They were wearing Quýnh’s perfume. “I’ll bring him back,” they said softly in Joe’s ear. “He’ll be all right.” They cleared their throat, straightening up. “I’m not losing anyone else.”

“Cheers to that,” Book said, ironically raising the whiskey bottle, and Andy rolled their eyes and slammed out the front door.

Joe still couldn’t move, but he called back the number that Nicky had called him from. It went to voicemail, but this time – “Andy’s coming to find you,” he said. “We’re not going to leave you alone.”

He hung up and threw the phone down, but threw it a little bit too hard so it slid off the counter and crashed into a cabinet. Joe could see the screen had cracked even before it hit the ground.

“Let’s get shitfaced,” Book said into the resounding silence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy birthday to me i guess?
> 
> drug addiction is difficult to talk about, and has as many faces and manifestations as there are people struggling with addiction. the descriptions and actions contained throughout this fic are based entirely on my own experience as well as that of family and friends, which means that these depictions may not align with your personal experiences. if there is anything particularly egregious, however, please feel free to, as always, leave a comment and i will make the appropriate revisions as quickly as possible.


	3. imploding the mirage

Joe kept going to work after Andy had left for Montreal. He couldn’t just sit in the house and do nothing, he wanted to keep himself moving. But it was harder and harder to move, harder and harder to get up, and after the fourth sick day in two weeks he got fired. Over the phone, which stung a little bit.

“You hated that job anyway,” Nile said. She was de-stressing by learning how to do about a million types of handicrafts. Embroidery floss and yarn and fabric kept showing up randomly, much to Joe’s concern; every time Quýnh came back from work, she was carrying a new package. Sooner or later they were going to run out of space to put it all. Currently, Nile was knitting something that was in theory supposed to be a sweater, but she had clearly messed up the pattern and it had turned into a tube that was far too small for any of their arms. “And you’ve been talking about changing careers since I met you.”

“I know,” Joe groaned from his position on the ground, his legs propped up on the couch. He hadn’t thought he was too stressed but his back, which was generally irritating on any given day, had thought otherwise and gone into spasms the day before. Quýnh and Nile and Booker had all accompanied him to urgent care, and if he hadn’t been so focused on not throwing up from the pain, it would’ve been a good time. The three of them really were a comedy of errors when they got together. “But I really don’t want to deal with this right now. Not with everything else going on.”

Quýnh and Booker came inside, chattering rapidly in French. Quýnh threw another package over to Nile’s chair. Booker was actually smiling, which was something that Joe hadn’t seen in – forever, really.

“Tell them the news,” Quýnh said, squeezing his arm, before making a beeline for her keyboard and pulling on her headphones, humming under her breath. She had been having fits of inspiration recently. When Joe couldn’t sleep or couldn’t stop thinking or was engrossed in drawing until late at night, Quýnh had been keeping him company from her corner of the living room, scribbling away on her notebook of music paper and humming to herself, or testing out things on her keyboard. She had always liked to pluck out her own small melodies, humming to herself, or throw some lyrics folded into a paper airplane at Joe’s head and demand he read them, but over the past six months it had gone into overdrive.

“Got a court date,” Booker said, collapsing onto the couch and pulling Joe’s feet into his lap. “They’re reopening the custody case.”

Nile squealed and threw her ball of yarn at his head. “Booker! That’s amazing!”

“When’s it set for?”

“Two months out,” Book said, scrubbing a hand over his face. “Closest we could get. But I’m going to get myself together, no more dicking around. If it gets me the boys back, then it’s all worth it.”

“What can we do to help?” Joe felt a little bit like an idiot, unable to see Booker’s face at all from his current position, so he just nudged Booker in the side with his foot instead.

“I’ve gotta quit drinking. Now, preferably.”

“It’s gonna be hard,” Nile said carefully. She was reeling her yarn back in. “They sometimes don’t look too fondly on addiction, and that sort of thing.”

“The past is past, though,” Joe said. “What matters is what you’re doing going forward. And he’s always been good to his kids, right, Book?”

“Who the fuck made you philosophical,” Book said, flicking Joe’s ankle.

“It’s the pain medication.”

“Should we dump all of the alcohol here?”

“We could make it fun,” Quýnh said suddenly, her head popping up from where she had been hunched over the keyboard. “Fun, so that you are not thinking too much about what you have lost.”

“You’ve got a lot of shit to do,” Joe said, finally pushing himself up onto his elbows so he could make eye contact with Book. “But we’ve got you. We’ll make it work.”

“It’s all going to be worth it in the end,” Book said hollowly, clearly trying to convince himself. His hands were shaking on Joe’s ankle. “This shit had better be worth it.”

Nile leaned over from her perch in the armchair and grasped his hand between both of hers. “It will, Book,” she said, and Joe watched as Book’s shoulders suddenly relaxed – although, who could say whether it was from her words or her touch, and Joe was going to have to figure that whole thing out eventually.

“Help me up,” Joe said finally. “Let’s make a game out of this.”

Nile swept into action as soon as everyone was on their feet. (Quýnh was excused from this, as she had swatted Booker’s hands away and said serenely that she had had a breakthrough in her new composition and that she would stab anyone who tried to move her with one of Nile’s knitting needles, which she placed threateningly on the stool next to her.) Nile turned on music so loudly that nobody could think and the three of them poured everything down the drain, even the shitty half-used cooking wine. She shimmied around and waved the paper bag she was collecting the recycling in in Booker’s face until he cracked a smile and swatted at her. Joe stuck close to Book’s side, and although he was pretty sure Booker couldn’t hear him over the music, kept up a steady stream of random math facts as the shaking in Book’s hands got worse and worse. Once they finished dumping out all the alcohol, Nile shooed them both out of the kitchen, insisting that she was going to make one of her mother’s recipes for them, and they instead listened to her sing as they set up the couch into something resembling a more permanent bed for Book to stay on.

“Have you got your stuff with you?” Joe asked. Booker shook his head. “Do you want to go grab it now, or…”

“Yeah, all right, Nile!” Her head popped up from behind the countertop. “We’re leaving, getting my shit!” She gave them a thumbs up and disappeared again.

It was horrible and humid and sticky outside, and by the time they made it to the subway stop they were both drenched in sweat. Joe was hanging onto Book’s arm like a lifeline because despite the pain meds, his back still hurt like a bitch. Booker was still shaking. “Hey,” Joe said, once they had made it onto the train, “tell me about your kids.”

“Hmm?”

“Your kids.” Joe cuffed him on the shoulder. “I haven’t seen them in two years.” _Not since your ex-wife got full custody_ , he didn’t say. “What do they like now, how old are they, I might’ve even forgotten their names.”

“Very funny,” Booker said, rolling his eyes, but he did as Joe asked, and they talked about his kids all the way up the stairs to his shitty apartment, while they packed up all his things (there wasn’t much, only a duffel bag worth that he wanted to keep and three full trash bags that he didn’t), until they went down to the property manager’s office and Joe watched through the window as Booker quickly spoke to the woman at the desk.

“What’d you tell her?” Joe asked as they walked back, arm in arm.

“Broke my lease,” Booker said. Joe stared at him and nearly crashed into a lamppost for his trouble. “I need a bigger apartment, that one was a one bedroom, and I have three children, Joe, we just went over this.” He sounded like Joe was significantly trying his patience, which was a comforting sign that things were on their way back to normal.

“I’m proud of you, Book,” Joe said, elbowing him in the ribs. Book rolled his eyes.

“Don’t even give me that shit, I haven’t done anything yet.”

“Nah,” Joe said, “but you’re going to make it this time. I can tell.”

When they got back to the apartment, Nile and Quýnh were both waiting for them, the countertop heaped high with food. Quýnh took Booker’s bag and tucked it away underneath the coffee table, while Nile ran over and pulled him tight into her arms, whispering something frantically in his ear. Joe turned away from them – it didn’t hurt to watch them, that wasn’t it, but there was something agonizing about – it was clearly private. That was all.

“Come,” Quýnh said, kissing Booker’s cheek on her way past. “Let’s eat. We have made great strides, today.”

“You three have not done anything,” Book groused.

“A win for one of us is a win for us all,” Quýnh said, waggling her eyebrows in an odd contrast to the sincerity in her voice. Joe shoved at Booker’s shoulder.

“Be quiet and eat. We’ve got you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello and good evening, my friends! the rest of these chapters will be posted throughout the course of tonight, and i am humbled and happy by your kind reception so far!
> 
> i do my best in terms of research and preparation for my writing, but doing my best also does not necessarily mean that i have done enough in terms of accurate representation. if you find any errors, no matter what size, and decide to use some of your precious emotional time and energy to correct me, i will be a) honored and humbled that you have chosen to do so and b) make the appropriate revisions as quickly as possible.


	4. the truth never set me free so i'll do it myself

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> art, as always, by the beautiful and talented [andromachete](https://andromachete.tumblr.com/).
> 
> now we are getting into the meat of this story and it is quýnh's time to shine! (dare i say it...but this may be my favorite chapter.) enjoy!

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/191813101@N02/50896789763/in/album-72157718119454578/)

Quýnh didn’t like clubbing. It was too loud and Quýnh’s shoes pinched her toes too tightly and people kept looking at her like she was something for sale. It wasn’t a good place to escape her thoughts, either. Quýnh was currently trying to not think about how jobs were harder and harder to find, how calls from her agent came less and less frequently. That was only the top of the pile of things she wasn’t thinking about, because she wasn’t really able to think about most of the other things that made up her life, ever.

But it was fine. She was doing better than – well. Everyone, except for probably Nile, who shone light as brightly as the sun and seemed relatively unflappable. (Quýnh had also at one time thought of herself as unflappable, and Nicky as stoic, and Andy as their source of strength, and…well.)

But the thing about their whole situation was that for better or for worse, they had to keep moving forward with their lives, and nobody had really wanted to stay in the house that evening. Booker had been miserable, as it had been one week since he had moved in with them and six days since he had stopped drinking, and Nile had been full of energy, having just turned in a draft of her thesis. “I want to go out,” she’d said, leaning over the back of the couch where Booker was slumped and poking him insistently in the side, “I want to go dancing, come dancing with me.”

“Mmmmm,” Booker had said, and although everything about his body language was screaming that he clearly did not want to go dancing, he pushed himself upright and swung his legs back down to land on the floor with a thump, which startled Joe awake from where he was sleeping under the coffee table. (Quýnh had stopped asking about these sorts of things – he was either in pain, slightly high on painkillers, tired, or most often, all three at once.)

“What’s happening?”

“We’re going dancing,” Booker said flatly. “Get up.” He dug his foot into Joe’s side and Joe hissed, swatting at Booker’s ankle.

“Fine, fine, let me get changed,” and he used a grip that was probably tighter than strictly necessary on Booker’s knee to lever himself upright.

“We don’t have to go dancing,” Nile said, backtracking a little in the face of how gingerly Joe was moving and Booker’s obvious disinterest.

“No, it’ll be good,” Booker said, making a massive effort to infuse a bit of life into his tone. It just made his accent stronger.

“Hmm,” Nile said, looking him over, and then “let me make you over, you’ll look so good, Book, you’ll forget about your ex-wife.” She frog-marched him back into her bedroom, where his duffel bag had somehow mysteriously relocated, and the door slammed shut behind them a little more loudly than they’d probably intended. Quýnh was still sitting on the couch. She suddenly felt like she’d been left behind or forgotten. It wasn’t an uncommon feeling these days.

“Hmm,” she said, mostly to herself. “Someone has to talk to Book about that.”

* * *

Quýnh had met Andy and Lykon first. 

Quýnh wasn’t good at words. Not like everyone else. She didn’t express herself through her words, instead it was actions. She tried to make people feel the way she cared with other things, and when she started learning to play the piano, she was expressive like that, but she felt like all of her friends were good with words.

(All of them except for Andy. But she didn’t want to think about Andy right now.)

Her friends – her new family, because it was hard for her to talk to her family, now, in the same way it was hard for all of them except for Nile, because she was the most extraordinary out of all of them – were all extraordinarily talented. Quýnh knew that. She knew that some people probably thought she was talented like them, because of her skill with piano. Quýnh herself thought she was pretty talented. But none of them came close to Lykon. Lykon was good at everything he did, and he did everything.

Quýnh had met him when she was back in school. Lykon was such a good musician that he came to Julliard like her to take lessons and play in ensembles, but he was also pursuing a double degree at Columbia, and the worst part about all of it was that he was a genuinely nice person. Andy had already been pulling Quýnh out of her shell and forward into the world, little by little, and Quýnh would always credit Andy with saving her, but Lykon was the one who made their lives vibrant. He dragged them both out to do things, things Quýnh would have never thought to do in places that even Andy hadn’t heard of. They went on more adventures than Quýnh could have ever dreamed of, and that was how they picked up the others.

Lykon was the one who found Joe, at a performance art show that they all went to dressed as fancily as possible for the hell of it. Quýnh was the one who met Nicky. They’d been staggering out of a tiny restaurant tucked down three back alleyways, Lykon and Joe with arms slung over eachothers’ shoulders, Quýnh and Andy swinging their clasped hands between them dramatically for the fun of it, when Quýnh had realized she’d forgot her purse hanging on the back of the chair. She’d run back to get it only to open the restaurant door and collide headlong with a waiter who had been running after them with her purse, and who also ended up being their Nicky.

(She’d always had a soft spot for Nicky. She knew it wasn’t her fault what happened with him, just as much as it wasn’t his fault. If she thought about it too much, though, it didn’t matter. The guilt still crippled her. She didn’t want to think about Nicky right now.)

Andy found Booker at some dive bar that Lykon had dragged them to, then Nile at a salon where Lykon got incredible purple acrylics, Quýnh got the best French tips she’d ever had in her life, and Andy groused about how long they were taking before storming out to smoke and crashing into Nile on the way. Andy adopted them all in their own way, but Lykon was the one whose vivacity and talent and charm glued them together as a family, and now that he was gone - it was just hard. Out of everyone, Quýnh had been closest to him and Andy, and now Lykon was gone forever and Andy was gone for now.

Quýnh felt very lonely these days. But she tried not to dwell on it.

Nicky had never called her to tell her that he was getting clean, he only ever said that to Joe. Every day that passed without a text from him, her heart broke a little bit more. She wasn’t sure if he wasn’t calling her because he didn’t want to lie to her, or if she’d done something wrong, and she knew that he’d either thrown his phone away or turned it off because every text she sent never even got delivered. But Andy had gone to get him, now, so he’d be all right.

She had to focus on that. He’d be all right.

They’d all be all right.

* * *

Quýnh was sitting with her thoughts for a while before anyone else emerged. Joe was out first, and he collapsed down heavily to sit on the arm of the chair she was sitting in.

“Are you coming with?” she asked. He gestured wryly to himself which, right, he wasn’t wearing sweatpants.

“It’s not a bad day, not really. And I can’t sit in here and wait for that damn phone to ring.”

Quýnh didn’t know how to respond to that. She didn’t really know what to say to any of them anymore. “That makes sense,” she finally settled on. Joe didn’t look at her, but he reached over and took her hand. She squeezed his hand, probably too hard, and they sat there not looking at each other until Nile and Booker tumbled down the hall and swept them up and out the door.

It wasn’t a bad club Nile picked out. They got there and Joe disappeared within five minutes. Quýnh didn’t blame him – he was very handsome, and she thought out of everyone he deserved the most chance to forget about the circumstances they were currently mired in.

“Where’d Joe go?” Book asked when she leaned back against the bar next to him. He pushed a cocktail at her that almost matched the color of her dress and took a long gulp from his water bottle. Quýnh was so proud of him that it hurt.

“Hmm,” she said, daintily sipping at her cocktail. “Probably pulled someone.”

“Already?” Booker turned around to face the crowd with her and sighed, so deeply that his whole body shook and their elbows collided. “Guess I’m getting old.”

“Guess so,” Quýnh said. Nile was already dancing. It was crowded enough that it was hard to make her out but every once in a while, the lights would reflect off her gold top.

Quýnh wasn’t the one for heart to hearts. That was Lykon, or Joe. Still, she thought she’d give it a try, so – “are we talking about this?” she asked, gesturing vaguely towards Nile, now sandwiched between two men. One was kissing down her neck.

“What is there to talk about,” Book said, resignedly.

“I suppose we are not.” Quýnh finished her cocktail and placed the glass behind her, then carefully leaned over to rest her head on Book’s shoulder. She was just tall enough in her heels for that to work. “I think it may make you feel better. If you were to tell her.”

“Maybe,” Booker said, “but I know what she’d say. And it’d make her feel worse.”

She wasn’t that much younger than them, Quýnh knew that, but still, watching Nile…she felt old. “I am not good at this,” she said. Booker made a sort of querying tremulous huff. “Being the glue of our group. Andy is much better at it. Lykon was the best.”

“We don’t need you to be the glue,” Book said. “I can’t deal with another damn change.”

“Hmm,” Quýnh said again. She didn’t want to think about that too much.

“Quýnh!” Nile popped out of the crowd and grabbed her hands before Quýnh had time to react. “Come dance with me,” she complained, “you’re no fun.”

“Bring Booker,” Quýnh protested, but she still followed Nile into the crowd.

“He’s a lost cause!” Nile shouted over the music. “I’m surprised he even came with us at all!”

“Only for you,” Quýnh said, and for a moment, she thought she’d given too much away – Nile’s smile slipped. Quýnh wasn’t very good at being the glue that held them together, so she just smiled at Nile and held out her arms so that they could dance together.

Quýnh had always liked dancing. She learned to dance a world away, with her parents who it still hurt too much to think about, and her sister that she still called every weekend. When she came to America for school, she had felt different in this way along with so many others – they didn’t dance like her here. But she learned quickly, and by the time she met Andy, she had learned how to dance again. Just like she had to relearn everything here in this country, really.

Quýnh missed Andy. It was an intrinsic truth, a foundational point of Quýnh’s world right now. Quýnh was a pianist. She felt the most when she played music. She was living in her friend’s bedroom. She loved her family. It was hard to get a job. She missed Andy.

She and Andy were like ships, she thought. They had crashed into each other and Andy had been the one who dragged Quýnh up from her own wreckage, dragged her through, made her see that maybe things were not so bad and it was worth starting a life here. With them. And then they passed each other, again and again, never really intersecting like Quýnh wanted them to. She knew that Andy wanted her, and they had gone on dates, and the sex was explosive, but did Andy love her in the way that Quýnh loved them? Quýnh didn’t know what was worse, if Andy did or if they didn’t. She tried not to dwell on it, and they would be like ships, she always thought. Passing and passing, each on their own way, never able to meet. 

It was the first time Quýnh had ever followed this train of thought in a club while she was dancing, while hands roamed all over her body and she ground down against thighs pressed between her legs until she got bored and pushed herself off and moved onto the next person, but every time she thought about these things, she always thought that the next time, the next time she saw Andy, the next time they collided, she would ask them. Maybe it was something that could be resolved by just asking.

Nile winked at Quýnh, pulling her back out of her thoughts. They were separated by some people but Quýnh could always feel Nile’s energy when they were in a room together. Nile had woven her arms around the neck of who may have very well been the tallest woman Quýnh had ever seen. She jerked her head towards the back of the club – she was going to leave with this woman.

Quýnh never liked it when they were separated. She was always afraid of what could happen. She always kept her phone charged and in her pocket, and she always told her family, in case they every forgot, that they could always call her at any time for any reason. Quýnh gave Nile a thumbs up, carefully scanned this woman’s face so that she could remember all the details in case Nile did not come home the next day with mascara crinkled in the corners of her eyes and her shoes in her hand and a lazy quality in her step. Nile beamed back at her – she was so _happy_ , Quýnh wished she remembered how to be that happy – and then the two women were gone.

She glanced back towards the bar. Booker was gone, too, but Quýnh was not so surprised by that. It was like Nile had said, it was a miracle he had come at all.

Quýnh was alone again, but now that she was in the group of people, she was not having a terrible time. And she had their apartment key, tucked carefully in the inside pocket of her jacket, so she knew that she could go back whenever she would like to and could instead dance first, and so that was what she did, for a little while.

Eventually her feet started to hurt, so she pushed her way to the edge of the crowd and reached down to halfheartedly rub at her ankle. It was not a sort of hurt that was going to resolve without going home to rest, and she realized that as soon as she had left the energy of the people crushing in around her she wanted nothing more than to just go home, so she turned to do just that. She thought she saw someone who looked like Andy leaning against the bar, but Quýnh was too tired to investigate further and she really wanted to sleep and if Nile did not come back she would get the bed they had been sharing to herself, at least for one night.

She had almost made it to the door when someone grabbed her wrist, hard, and Quýnh spun around, ready to drive an elbow into whoever was bothering her, before there was an impatient “Christ, it’s me,” and there was enough of a flash of clothes-skin-smell-earrings-Andy that Quýnh restrained herself from lashing out as Andy’s lips crashed into hers.

Quýnh shoved them backwards until they bumped into something, probably the wall, and tried to have her own say, licking into Andy’s mouth, grabbing so tightly at their waist that there would be marks left, however briefly, by her nails. She wanted to say many things, and this was the time that she was going to ask Andy, yes, but she was suddenly terrified, because Andy had gone to get Nicky and if they were here in the club then where was Nicky, was he dead, was he –

“Stop,” Andy breathed into the space between their lips, just before biting down on Quýnh’s lower lip. Quýnh pinched them. “He’s okay. We’re both okay. He’s crashed on the couch.”

“My couch?”

Andy waved a hand, which meant that they had broken into one of Andy’s dubiously safe and rarely occupied apartments that they kept an eye on and used when they didn’t want to be around other people. “We needed some space.”

“Hmm,” Quýnh said, and squeezed Andy’s side with more intent. “Nile has gone home with someone else. Booker does not have a key.”

“And Joe?”

“He is – not happy. But he is also with someone else, tonight.”

“I got a car,” Andy said, and Quýnh couldn’t help her sniff at that.

“Cars are impractical.”

“Do you want to walk the twenty blocks home?”

Quýnh huffed, but she followed Andy out a door that was clearly not supposed to be a public exit and jumped into the car.

* * *

Andy wasn’t stoic, not all of the time. Quýnh knew that Andy felt, and felt, and felt, and loved, and loved, and loved, but they did not want to show it. Not so intimately, because Quýnh and Andy were similar in that regard. They feared showing how deeply they cared, because they knew how much it hurt if that care was not returned. Or if that care were to suddenly end, with the person stripped away from them. Like Lykon had been.

But around Quýnh, Andy – Quýnh wouldn’t say they were different, because she felt egotistical to say that Andy felt more relaxed or changed simply because of her presence. Andy just reacted more and expressed more, because out of all of them, Andy and Quýnh had found each other first. Quýnh wouldn’t presume to say that she knew Andy, not completely, because nobody could ever know another person completely. But she also knew that due to their bond, she knew Andy better than anyone else in the world. Andy had told her so.

Andy had also told her once that they didn’t like having their hookups go down on them. Quýnh had taken this detail into her heart, taken the seed of their regard, and thought of this act as something special, another thing that just the two of them shared. Maybe Quýnh was the only person who knew the way Andy’s breath hitched when someone used the flat of their tongue to trace circles over their clit. Maybe Quýnh, and nobody else, or nobody of consequence, at least, knew that Andy’s legs would tremble before they came from this but not if they came on someone’s fingers. Maybe nobody else in the world knew how it felt when Andy’s thighs clamped so tightly around their head that all other sounds, smells, even the light was blocked out, and all Quýnh could think about was Andy, and Andy's taste, and Andy’s pleasure, as Andy shook apart above and around her.

Andy pulled on Quýnh’s hair, dragging her back up their body, and kissed her hard. Quýnh kissed back but she was too in her head to be in the mood for Andy to return the favor, so she batted Andy’s wandering hands away. Andy didn’t have any odd preconceptions about reciprocity in bed, for which Quýnh was very grateful, so they relented after Quýnh rebuffed them and instead reached over to grab their jacket off the floor and pull out their cigarettes.

“Nile will not be pleased that you are smoking in her bed,” Quýnh said. Andy rolled over and flopped down on top of Quýnh, pressing an absentminded kiss to the top of her breast as they did so. They held the cigarette as far away from Quýnh’s face as they could and sat up every time they took a drag, because Quýnh had once told Andy, seven years ago, that she didn’t mind if Andy smoked around her but she did not like the way the smell clung to her hair so to please keep the smoke away from her, and Andy had always remembered that.

“I’ll wash the sheets,” Andy said.

“I have been worried about you,” Quýnh said. Andy said nothing, just scooted down the bed a little bit more to get comfortable. “You, specifically. You have done such a selfless thing, to go to Nico in such a time of need.”

“It wasn’t selfless. I wanted him home with us. Joe yelled at me when I left, told me that I wasn’t thinking about what Nicky wanted at all, and it’s true, maybe I wasn’t. I just wanted him where I could see him.”

“I cannot imagine he was happy to see you.”

“Oh no,” Andy said wryly, blowing a smoke ring at the ceiling. “He certainly wasn’t. But he’s polite, our Nicolò – invited me to this apartment he was crashing at, then yelled at me in the bathroom because it was the only room with a working door, and after we fought kicked a guy off the futon so I didn’t have to sleep on the floor.”

“Do you tell people these things? Other people, I mean?”

“Why do you want to know,” Andy said, but not in the way that meant they were picking a fight or feeling combative. Instead, it was the way that meant that they were still nervous and unused to anyone showing so much care. Quýnh had always felt the pain of that, Andy’s insecurity in the face of affection, as surely as a knife.

“If I were not here – I would want for you to have someone that you could share these things with. If I were to be taken from us, like Lykon. I would hate for you to be alone.”

“Don’t say that!” Andy pushed upright so fast that Quýnh had to scramble backwards to avoid getting headbutted. “Don’t you ever say that, do you hear me?”

“Andy. It is only practical, and I have been thinking…”

“Don’t say that.” If anybody had been listening from outside the bedroom door Andy would have sounded angry, but Quýnh knew to read the way that they hunched over, as if preparing for a blow. The way their eyes roamed over Quýnh’s face, tinged with something too close to panic. “You are not getting taken from me, that is not happening. I’m not going to let it happen.”

“You can’t fight life, or misfortune,” Quýnh said. She leaned over and took the cigarette from Andy’s hand, stubbed it out on the coaster Nile had on her bedside table. “We are like ships, Andy. We pass, and we pass, and we never collide, our lives do not intertwine in every way. You cannot protect me from everything.”

“We are not ships, Quýnh.” Quýnh watched, almost transfixed, as Andy’s expression crumpled, and then a tear ran down their cheek and Quýnh launched herself at them, nearly knocking them both backwards and off the edge of the bed. “We are not ships. Or maybe I am, but you – I know that you think Lykon was who kept us all together. And they all think that I’m in charge, that I’m the caretaker, and you can’t even see how important you are to me. To all of us, but without you I don’t know who I’d be. I don’t know what I’d do. Can’t you see that?”

“I’ve been so lonely,” Quýnh said, her voice cracking. They were both crying and still covered in sweat, it was not the way she had imagined this conversation. “Without you, I – I love them. They are my family. But I love you in a way that I cannot even say. It chokes me.”

Andy grabbed her face between their hands. Quýnh was expecting to be kissed and kissed within an inch of her life, kissed until she ran out of breath, but instead Andy just looked very intently into her eyes as they spoke. “Without you, I couldn’t do any of the shit that I do. I don’t like who I was in Montreal. I was hard, and I loved Nicky in a way that was almost too brutal for him to take. I am at my best, and I can care for people the best, when I am with you. And I love you. I can’t even say honestly I love you the most out of everyone, because there is nobody that compares.”

Andy had always been a delicate crier, much to Quýnh’s chagrin. They somehow always looked tragically beautiful and statuesque. In contrast, Quýnh was hiccupping almost too hard to even talk, which she thought was terribly unfair.

“In the beginning when we met,” she finally managed to choke out, “it was just you and me. And now, even when a room is filled, whether it’s with our family, or strangers, or it could be everyone in the world, and it would still be just you and me. You are who I see in a crowd.”

“And that’s how it’s always gonna be, okay?” Andy thumbed away some of the tears that were mixed with Quýnh’s mascara and making her vision cloudy. “You and me, until the end. I know I haven’t been there, not the way you wanted me to. But we’re gonna work it out.”

“Okay,” Quýnh said, “I would like for us to not be ships passing, any longer,” and although she hated how silly the words were that had come out of her mouth almost after she said them, they seemed to have some effect on Andy, because finally, she was being kissed, and kissed, and kissed, until she ran out of breath. Just as she had wanted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for your time, your kudos, and your readership, as always, my friends. onto the next!


	5. i don't forgive you but please don't hold me to it

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a tough chapter awaits, but i am excited to continue on this journey with all of you! the art, as always, is brought to grace our screens by the incredible [andromachete](https://andromachete.tumblr.com/).

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/191813101@N02/50897620272/in/album-72157718119454578/)

Joe had to be dreaming. That was the only way, the only possible explanation he could come up with for this.

Andy had been gone for almost a month and none of them had heard anything at all, not even Quýnh. Or so he’d thought – he now realized that he hadn’t seen Quýnh at all yesterday, not after he stumbled back in the morning after a night that left a slightly bad taste in his mouth, and he’d left early this morning and gone out for the whole day to try and clear his head. He’d just wanted to come home and stumble into bed and sleep for a week, but instead he had – this. Maybe it was the shock that was making him slow, but Joe hadn’t even known Andy was back, let alone that they’d brought their charge in tow. So, Joe concluded that he had to be dreaming, because there was no other possible way that Nicky could be standing in his living room. Neither Nicky or Andy had a key, and – Nicky didn’t have a key. Okay. Joe could start with that small question. He could work with that.

“How’d you get in here?”

Nicky jumped. Actually jumped and then spun around on his heel to fully face Joe, like Joe had disturbed him, or disrupted something he was doing, when he was the one who was out of place in this equation. In the past that sort of laser focus and ensuing complete unawareness of anything else around him had been endearing to Joe, but right then it just sort of pissed him off.

“Nile let me in,” Nicky said, and Joe’s traitorous heart almost skipped a beat at the sound of his voice. “She was leaving for work and I didn’t – I had hoped – well. I was looking for Andy, and Nile said that I could wait here until they got back.”

“Andy doesn’t live here,” Joe said, and went into the kitchen to start sorting the mountain of mail that they’d all been neglecting, just for something to do. “You can use my phone to text them if you want.” He couldn’t look at Nicky for too long or he’d…well. Did Nicky even have a phone anymore? Had he gotten a new one, with a new number? Or had he always kept the old one and just never answered it? Never answered any of their increasingly panicked texts and calls when they couldn’t find him?

“No, it’s all right. I will wait.” Joe had been staring at the same envelope for quite some time, so it made sense and was relatively reasonable that Nicky had followed him into the kitchen, but it didn’t mean that Joe had to like it. “I also wanted to – I missed you all. I would like to see Quýnh, and spend more time with Nile.” Booker was not mentioned. Joe wasn’t surprised. They were all friends, yes, but Nicky and Booker had been incredibly close, close enough that once Nicky relapsed and took off, strain had crept in. Booker had remained clean by the barest shred of luck, and Joe knew that it hadn’t been easy for him to see Nicky start using again, or to watch him spiraling. It hadn’t been easy for Joe to watch Nicky spiraling.

“And me?” Joe asked. He didn’t know why he was asking that, he didn’t know what he thought he was going to gain from this. “Did you want to see me?”

Nicky’s gaze snapped up to meet his, and he actually had the audacity to look hurt. “Joe, surely you must know how I feel.”

“I don’t!” He hadn’t meant to yell, that wasn’t going to accomplish anything either, but it was too late and it was out now and Joe wanted to feel so much about this whole situation, but he was just so, so tired. “I don’t know how you feel, Nicky, because we were…god, something, I don’t know, and then you ran, and you haven’t told me anything since then!”

Nicky flinched like Joe had actually physically struck him, and Joe wanted to apologize, to take it back, to go to him, because now, after all this time, there was only a countertop separating them. He didn’t want to hurt Nicky, not really, he wanted to protect him and shield him from all of the hurt, and Joe hated that after all this time and after everything they had been through, his instincts were still screaming at him to apologize and take it back and do everything in his power to keep him happy and safe.

“I suppose I deserve that,” Nicky said lowly.

“It’s not about how deserving you are, how many times do I - ”

“I didn’t come here to fight with you, Joe, I just - ”

“We’re all practically family, we don’t need you to act a certain way or do certain things for us to love you - ”

“I don’t want that from you!” This time it was Nicky who shouted. He had always been reserved in public and less reserved around them when they were all together in their group of six, but he only got loud and exuberant when they were one on one. More people than that and he’d feel self-conscious, and Joe knew this as well as he knew that Nicky didn’t like raw tomatoes and couldn’t sleep with the sheets tucked in around his feet and he hated that he knew all of this, he hated that he knew so many deep, aching, intimate details. “I know that, you’re always telling me that shit, I know that from them, and I feel so grateful to have their love and regard, but I don’t want that from you!”

Joe felt – well.

He felt a lot of things, and then he felt nothing at all. But he was an adult, so he was not going to do what he would have several years or several months ago and just storm out and let his emotions take over, he was instead going to be mature about this.

“I need to sit down,” he said first, because his back was screaming at him “and I am also going to give you one chance to explain what you mean by that.” Maybe it wasn’t very mature of him to toss out an ultimatum. Joe didn’t really care.

“Okay, okay, shit, this isn’t coming out right.”

Nicky actually looked distraught about this whole situation. It would have been almost funny, but Joe wobbled and would have collapsed right on the kitchen floor if it weren’t for Nicky, who caught him before he fell entirely. Because Nicky knew all of his tells. Nicky knew how to tell when he was in pain and hiding it, or in pain and not acknowledging it, or when he was in so much pain it was hard to walk or function or talk. Joe had forgotten about this. Joe had also forgotten the way that Nicky’s cologne smelled, and how his forearms felt under Joe’s fingertips, and he really did not want to think about any of this right now.

“Couch?”

“Yes, let me,” and it was a combined effort to get Joe onto the couch and on his back. Nicky collapsed on the other side of the couch and pressed his back into the arm, wrapping his arms around his knees. It looked like he was trying to make himself as small as possible.

Joe shifted slightly so he could still keep some eye contact with Nicky and hissed at the twinge. “You were saying?”

“I don’t want to have the type of relationship with you that I have with the others.”

“Right,” Joe said, “I get that.”

“No,” Nicky said vehemently, “No, you misunderstand me.”

“You’re not doing a very good job explaining.”

Nicky sighed. “Okay. Let me…let me think.” Joe let him think for what he privately thought was a more than generous amount of time, then cleared his throat, which made Nicky flinch, and fuck, what had even happened in the past few months? What had happened to them? “I do not want the type of relationship with you that I have with Nile. Or Quýnh, or Booker. Certainly not with Andy. I don’t want to be like family with you – or no, I do, I do, but not like that. I want…more.”

“Oh,” Joe said.

“I know I do not have to do anything about deserving, or I…” Nicky trailed off in frustration again. “Sorry. I know that for them, for family, that I do not have to be worthy or deserving in any certain way for them to still care for me. But the way that I want to be with you, I want…to be deserving of you. Of being your partner, of being so close to you in your life.”

“ _Nicky_ ,” Joe said, because he didn’t even know what to say to that and he also couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt so helpless (but he did, it had been that time that Nicky called him from Montreal and all Joe could think was _fuck, not now, don’t die, don’t leave me_ ) “You don’t - ”

“You deserve everything!” It exploded out of Nicky and surprised them both. “You deserve better than what you have had to face, in every area of your life, you should have nothing but the best, and what can I give you? What can I offer you, that will add to your life? I have nothing, no job, no money, nowhere to go, I am barely even alive and I want a fix so badly I can taste it, and - ”

“Stop!” Joe said. “Stop. I won’t listen to you talk about yourself like that.”

They were both breathing hard.

“I’m sorry,” Nicky finally said, looking very contrite. “This is not the way I would have liked to do this.”

Joe looked at him, and maybe it was due to just the stress or the ridiculousness of the situation, or something about how exhausted and in pain he was, but before he could control himself, he had burst out laughing. Nicky stared at him, and looked slightly alarmed, but before long he was laughing too. Joe felt a little bit hysterical, but they sat there and laughed until Joe was out of energy, and Nicky had always been the most patient out of all of their friends, with him. He’d always seen Joe in a way that their other friends didn’t. He wasn’t judgmental of any of Joe’s shit, he followed his whims and let Joe just be, and that was something that – god, Joe had missed him so much.

“I’ve missed you so much,” he said. “I’ve - ” He was usually the talker between the two of them. Nicky was not. But right now it was difficult to find the words that would make any sense of the million things going around in his head, and things were different now, after all, in every area of their lives and also in terms of whatever their relationship was, so why shouldn’t this one thing be different as well? “I don’t know,” he said carefully, “if this is a conversation to have right now. But I have missed you. I know the others have too, and I obviously can’t speak for you and I don’t know what you’re thinking or how you’re really doing or what you’re going through, but I think that right now what I would like the most is to make sure that you’re healthy. And that you’re okay.”

“I am, I am home. How could I not be okay?”

Joe was not going to cry. He was going to try very hard not to cry. “All I want is for you to be happy,” he finally settled on. “More than anything, that is all I have ever wanted for you.”

“Joe, I – well. Once I am settled here. And once I have seen everyone and have somewhere to go, and maybe a job, although I do not think Andy wants to let me out of their sight for a little bit, would you like to – do something? Just the two of us?” Nicky was actually nervous, Joe realized. Nicky hadn’t been nervous around him in years.

“For the sake of clarity,” he said, “would this something be in the vein of a date?”

“Yes,” Nicky said in a rush, on an exhale, everything leaving his lungs in a great sigh of relief. “A date.”

“I’d like that. I’d like that a lot.” And it was true. Joe wasn’t particularly good at being honest with himself, but he didn’t know if he’d ever wanted something so much as much as he wanted Nicky in that moment. Nicky suddenly pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes, hard. “Nicky, are you crying?”

“No,” Nicky said, and then immediately choked on a sob. “Yes. I am so glad that you said yes, that is all.”

“Nicolò,” Joe said in alarm, watching as Nicky’s shoulders started to shake, and despite the pain akin to hot knives stabbing repeatedly into his spine, dragged himself across the couch so he could pull Nicky into a hug. “It’s all right now, you’re safe, you’re home, I have you.”

Joe just kept saying platitudes and holding him too tightly, and Nicky kept crying. It was probably from the stress. Nobody came home, which was odd as it was almost 7pm at that point, but maybe everyone had coordinated and decided to give them space. That was probably for the best. Nicky would almost certainly have not done anything like this if there had been anyone else in the apartment.

“I can’t imagine how stressful everything’s been for you,” Joe said once Nicky’s sobs had calmed and he’d moved into the hiccupping stage. “It seems like absolute shit.”

“It is,” Nicky said, his voice clogged. “But I will go back to therapy. I will get better. And I have done this before, it did not take, but I know I can do it again.”

“It did take,” Joe said firmly. “You saw something that…” He cleared his throat. He knew a little bit of what Nicky had seen, seen what destruction had been wrought on that body, but he had not watched Lykon die. Not the way that Nicky had. “Something that I don’t think people are meant to see. And you needed something to get you through it.”

“Then I relapsed,” Nicky said wryly, “and as such, it did not take.” He smoothed a hand over Joe’s shoulder, pretending that he was going after a wrinkle. “I am sorry that I cried all over your shirt.”

“It’s an ugly shirt,” Joe said. “I’ll wash it, it’s not a big deal.” Nicky still looked torn up about it and Joe couldn’t stand it, he couldn’t stand any of this, how much pain he was clearly in. “Not a big deal, Nicky,” he reiterated, and Nicky looked almost like he believed him.

Then, quite suddenly, Joe nearly fell over due to the sudden shift of weight that came with Nicky, who was not a very small person, launching himself at Joe and kissing him. Joe acted on several instincts at once, the strongest being his desire to not fall over and crack his head open, and grabbed Nicky’s shoulders so that they both didn’t fall off the couch. This had the sudden added benefit of Nicky taking this as an affirmation of Joe’s consent, which wasn’t untrue, and grabbing him around the waist to haul him back upright and into Nicky’s lap, and yeah, that was hot. Joe was into this.

Joe was trying hard to remember all of the reasons why this was a bad idea, but right now, a lot of blood had left his brain and his focus had narrowed to how broad Nicky’s shoulders were under his hands, and the involuntary twitches in his back when Joe ran his fingernails up and down Nicky’s spine over his tshirt, and how good that stupid cologne smelled on him (Joe’s unhelpful brain finally recognized it, it was one that he had bought for Nicky, which was even hotter, somehow), and how kissing Nicky could get a little bit treacherous because he tended to get bitey without necessarily realizing it, but for some reason that was also hot for Joe, and then Nicky actually moaned when Joe accidentally pulled his hair because some had gotten stuck in his ring, which made two things happen. One, Joe was suddenly rock hard in his jeans, and two, he noticed that Nicky was having a similar problem. A third thing happened then, which was that Joe’s hands were somehow at Nicky’s belt buckle without him having consciously moved them there, but he wasn’t too embarrassed because Nicky was doing the same thing to him.

“This is a very bad idea,” Nicky said, and then summarily shoved his hand down Joe’s pants. Joe had been hoping for a little more dignified response but all he could manage was a squeak. “This is really not how I thought this afternoon was going to go.”

“It’s not afternoon anymore, and – ah – Nicky, we’re on the couch, Nile could be back soon.”

“True,” Nicky said, and stopped moving his hand. Joe whined before he realized what was happening, which was a little bit embarrassing, but judging by the way Nicky’s hips suddenly bucked and the stupid smirk he got on his face, he seemed to like the effect he was having on Joe. “If you can get me off in the next five minutes I’ll blow you. We’ll be done in fifteen minutes or less.”

“Fuck you,” Joe said, and twisted his wrist on the next upstroke in a particularly effective way. Nicky’s head slammed into the back of the couch.

(He didn’t take offense, though. Joe doubted anyone could hold out longer than five minutes when on the receiving end of one of Nicky’s blowjobs.)

* * *

If possible, their relationship got stranger after that.

Nile came back almost immediately after they had finished and gotten their clothes rearranged, with a timing so eerie that Joe thought she might have been listening at the door. She was excited to see Nicky, although she didn’t react to him in the same way that Joe had, which was both obvious and also a good thing, but it did get late and suddenly it was almost one in the morning and Nile was swearing and hurrying off to bed. Quýnh had not reappeared all evening, which meant that she was almost certainly with Andy somewhere. Joe didn’t know if he wanted to think about the amount of trouble they were probably causing. With Quýnh, at least, he knew that Andy wouldn’t get arrested. (Andy had a sense of morality that did not bend to any laws that they considered ‘arbitrary’. However, they were so fiercely protective of Quýnh that neither of them would ever end up detained, simply because that would require separating the two, and Andy would certainly not go to jail quietly without Quýnh.) Booker had also not shown up, but that was no guarantee he wouldn’t stumble in later.

“I can sleep - ”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Joe said.

Nicky had only a backpack that he’d taken with him when he left. The rest of his things were at his old apartment, which he was categorically refusing to go back to. They also soon found out that for some reason Andy and Quýnh were inhabiting Nicky’s old apartment, as they needed privacy, and because nobody was using it anyway, Andy had said, what did they care.

It was all right. Nicky only had a backpack and Joe didn’t mind. His bed was big enough for both of them and there was an extra empty drawer in the dresser.

(His bed was big enough that they didn’t have to sleep pressed together every night. They did anyway.)

Nicky at first didn’t want to go outside. Then, it turned into that he wouldn’t go outside. Booker was spending his time alternately speaking with a plethora of lawyers and vomiting into the toilet, and Nile was focusing on her thesis, as she should, which meant that due to Joe’s own health and job search related crises, Andy was the one who noticed Nicky’s hesitance to leave the apartment. Andy was also the one who decided to talk to Nicky about it.

Joe got home from one of his latest job interviews, which he knew was most likely going to be as fruitless as the last three, and heard the yelling as soon as he stepped off the elevator. He’d tried to learn Italian before, or the specific dialect that Nicky spoke, but he hadn’t gotten as good at it as Andy, and he certainly couldn’t follow what exactly the argument was about.

Nicky froze as soon as Joe came in the door. He looked almost – ashamed?

“I can hear you from the other end of the hall, Andy,” Joe said mildly, refusing to unpack whatever was happening.

“Hmm,” Andy said, and went back to arguing with Nicky, only this time in English for Joe’s benefit. By the look on Nicky’s face, he appreciated the gesture about as much as Joe did.

“You won’t even consider it, and I think that’s fucking stupid,” Andy said emphatically. “I told you - ”

“I don’t want to go somewhere like that, somewhere where they will…they will pathologize me, have all those people stare at me, they won’t let me do anything for myself and I will have no peace - ”

“Not all of those places are like that, Nicky, that’s what I’m trying - ”

“I don’t want to go to be locked away,” Nicky spat, “like a prisoner, like someone who cannot live their life for themselves - ”

“But you’re locking yourself away here! That’s exactly what you’re doing!”

“I’m not trying to hide from anything, it’s different - ”

“If you step outside what are you going to do? Are you going to go straight back to your dealer? Go check your apartment, see if you’ve left anything there?”

The silence was chilling.

“Well,” Joe said finally, “I think I’d better leave.”

“Yes,” Andy said, not taking their eyes off of Nicky, “I think maybe that would be best.”

Joe texted Nile, and Book, for the hell of it, warning them off of returning. Booker sent several unrelated emojis. Nile offered to meet for coffee around the corner, where she could work on her thesis and Joe could work on job hunting until someone sent them the all clear.

“So,” Nile said, once they had both ordered drinks and gotten the combination of jackets bags and Joe’s new cane, which he hated and was therefore ignoring as much as possible, situated around the table. “Are we going to talk about - ”

“I’m not sure what you’re referring to,” Joe said, “but the answer is no.”

“Joe,” Nile said, fixing him with a stare. “I’m not your therapist. But we do live together, and it seems that someone has moved into your bedroom.”

Joe leveled half a glare at her. She glared back, but with more ferocity. Joe stirred his coffee. She took a sip of hers and held eye contact.

“Fine, fine, I don’t know why I even bother with you.” Nile raised an eyebrow over her mug. “Yes, Nicky’s living in my room. But he won’t go back to his apartment and it seems stupid to make him sleep on the couch when I’ve got half of a bed.”

“Book doesn’t share the bed with you,” Nile said mildly.

“I’ve never sucked Book’s dick,” Joe said, lowering his voice just enough so that nobody else would overhear, and took great pleasure in watching Nile choke on her drink.

“Joe,” she said finally once she’d recovered, “I know that…well. I don’t know everything about what’s going on with you two, or exactly what was happening before Lykon died, but I just want to make sure that you’re okay.” Nile was always so sincere, and never pushed, and her earnestness and her cheer and her kindness was one of the things that Joe loved most about her.

“I’m going to be okay,” Joe said quietly. “He’s – I would rather him be there. With us. So that he’s not alone.”

“What if we can’t help him? In the way he needs?”

“I’m just going to do the best I can,” Joe said. “He feels like he’s under a microscope. So I’m trying to treat him like I did six months ago.”

“But he’s not the same person he was six months ago,” Nile said.

“I know! I know that. I’m just – I’m doing the best I can.”

“I’m so scared,” Nile said, finally. She took another sip of her coffee and wouldn’t look Joe in the eye. Joe reached over and squeezed her hand.

“I know,” he said. “I am too.”

“Tell me if it’s too much,” Nile said, “if you are overwhelmed, or if you can’t focus, or even if you just need me to cook dinner, I just – I want to help both of you.”

“Only if you tell me, too. It’s not going to be worth it if we don’t all make it out of this intact.”

Nile sniffed. Her phone buzzed. “Andy says it’s safe to go back,” she said.

“Let’s stay here for a little bit,” Joe said, and Nile was nodding before he even finished.

* * *

There were more and more good days after Andy and Nicky got into their huge fight. Andy was clearly unhappy with the outcome, but Nicky started to go outside more. He went to see his therapist. He went to meetings. He got a job at a bookstore, and although he insisted that it was nothing to be proud of, they threw him a party anyway.

“I’ve been thinking, Joe,” he whispered into the darkness of Joe’s room (their room, Joe was thinking of it now, their room) one night. Nicky liked to talk in the dark. He felt less pressure that way, he’d told Joe once. Then if he didn’t react the way people thought he should, or make the expressions he felt like he needed to, it wouldn’t matter, because nobody could see him. Joe was loath to deny him this comfort, even if he’d rather be sleeping.

“Mmm?”

“I would like to go back to school. To be a nurse, I think. I want to…do something. Something else, something more. I have too much time in which to think.”

“You’d be good at it,” Joe said, still drowsy, “But only go back if you really want to study, not just to fill your time. Otherwise it will be miserable. Nile can attest.”

Nicky huffed a little bit, squirmed in Joe’s arms. “I have always wanted to go back,” he said quietly. “I was not – I never thought I would do well. That I was not smart enough, because I cannot focus well. But now I can do part of school in classes in person, and part of the courses online. So I will not have to go out as much and I can learn in a way that I do better.”

“They’ll help you,” Joe said. He was a little more awake now. “The professors can help if you explain what’s going on, and we’ll help you.” Nicky stiffened enough that Joe thought he was about to start complaining, so he poked Nicky in the back. “You’re smart enough.”

“Not like you.”

“No, but I got a pure math degree because I like math more than any other subject, except for possibly poetry. I’d suggest not being smart like me, as it’s not very useful.” Joe didn’t think he’d said anything particularly funny but Nicky snorted and then started to laugh, so Joe counted that as a win.

The next day, though. That was a bad day.

Joe got home after another interview, which in this case, had been mildly successful and he thought he’d actually like the job, but he had also decided not to bring his cane, which he still hated, because he had noticed he had a far higher success rate for follow up calls if he didn’t bring his cane with him. So he was exhausted and slightly pissed off because he’d missed the first train and had to wait, and he just sort of crashed into his room expecting to sleep. He was not expecting to see Nicky, because Nicky was supposed to be at the bookstore for another hour. The bookstore had extremely flexible scheduling, so it was entirely possible that Nicky had just been let go early. But he was definitely not expecting to see one of his bottles of painkillers, which he was very careful to hide after taking, sitting out in the middle of the desk. He was certainly not expecting to see Nicky and his very strong painkillers in the same room. With most of the pills spilled across his desk.

“Nicky,” Joe said, and he counted it as a win that Nicky’s name was even intelligible, because he could barely think beyond his brain screaming _fuck, fuck, fuck_ on a loop. Nicky’s gaze snapped off the pills and back to Joe, and he just looked sad. “Where’d you get those?”

“You left them out,” Nicky said.

“No, I didn’t. Where’d you find them?”

Nicky pursed his lips. Joe waited. “In the back of the left kitchen cabinet,” Nicky finally muttered. “Behind the sriracha. Inside the empty salt container.”

_Goddammit._

“Is Nile home?”

“Yes,” Nicky said. “She’s taking a nap.” He was contemplating those damned pills like they held the secrets of the universe, and to him, maybe, they did.

“Can I – do you mind if I clean them up?” Nicky shook his head, jerkily. Joe didn’t want to move fast and startle him, but fuck, he was terrified. He nearly tripped in his haste to get over to the desk and Nicky grabbed his arm. It wasn’t clear if he was doing that to stabilize Joe or himself, so Joe didn’t pull his arm back free. Joe quickly swept all the pills back into the pill bottle, looked over the desk three times, four, five, making sure that he hadn’t missed any. “Nile!” he yelled, and fuck, he sounded panicked.

There were rapid footsteps and Nile appeared in the doorway. She looked panicked. “Joe? Nicky, what’s wrong, what’s - ”

“Nile,” Joe said, doing his best to keep his tone even, and very, very calm, “can you take these?” He held out the bottle to her. “I need you to take them and count them. There should be seventeen left.”

“I - ”

“Please, Nile.”

She snatched the pill bottle from him. Her hands were shaking very slightly. She’d redone her nails before she’d taken a nap, they were bright red now. Joe felt like he was vibrating out of his skin, he couldn’t imagine how frantic he must look. She glanced between the two of them once more and then disappeared. He heard her turn on the bathroom faucet not long after, and Joe didn’t have to guess why. He also felt like crying – fuck, if he’d been ten minutes later, what would have happened? Nile had to feel terrible because she’d been asleep, even though none of this was her fault.

“Why did you ask her to count them?” Nicky was speaking so quietly that Joe could barely hear him.

“To make sure they’re all still there.”

“Don’t you trust me?”

They’d already talked about honesty. Nicky couldn’t have secrets right now. He couldn’t hide where he was going or where he’d been, he wasn’t dodging the answers to people’s questions, and he was being open. He’d told them all that he wanted to do that, to be as open with them as he could, and Joe had been extending him the same courtesy, so Joe wanted to do the same now.

“I don’t know,” Joe said. “But fuck, I was so scared when I came in here and saw that. I’m so scared, now.”

“I didn’t take any of them, Joe, I’m so sorry.”

Joe stared at him, trying to ascertain if he was telling the truth, but Nicky’s eyes were very wide and he looked close to tears and there wasn’t anything but honesty there. He’d always been a bad liar.

“You’ve got nothing to be sorry for,” Joe said. “I’ll hide them better next time.”

“Sometimes I just – do not want to be part of this, anymore,” Nicky said that night, in the dark. Joe hummed to show he was listening. “My own life.”

Joe didn’t know what to say to that, so he said nothing, and instead waited for Nicky to speak again.

“I do not think I will ever get better,” Nicky said, and his breath hitched. “It will be this, for as long as I am alive, and I will always want to use. Always. I cannot imagine a time where I won’t feel like this, and maybe it would be better if I was to just give up.”

Joe had to tread very, very carefully here. “I think it would be easier,” he said. “If you gave up. But I don’t think it would be better. For example, Nile would miss you. For another example, you would be gone, and I can’t conceive of a world that would be any sort of better without you in it.”

“Do you know what saying shit like that does to me?” Nicky spun around so fast in Joe’s arms that Joe barely avoided an elbow to the face. “It’s hard to be depressed with you around.”

“I aim to please,” Joe said.

“I think I would like to go to rehab,” Nicky said the next morning over a very late breakfast. Joe had lost track of days overall recently, but it had to be a weekend because Nile had stumbled out to join them, bleary eyed and still wearing her bonnet, at about 10am. Joe, who had somehow picked up the obnoxious habit of dropping things when he was surprised, dropped his fork on the floor. Nile knocked her coffee mug over with her elbow when she reached across the counter to squeeze Nicky’s hand.

“I am so proud of you,” she said, holding tight to Nicky’s hand. “So proud, Nicky.”

“What the fuck?”

If Joe had still been holding anything, he would have dropped it again. As he wasn’t holding anything, he instead turned slowly to face the doorway, where Booker was propped up against the doorframe by what seemed to be nothing short of a miracle, and said dryly, “who let you in?” Nicky was staring at Booker, and Joe suddenly realized that this was the first time the two of them had seen each other since Nicky had come back. They had agreed without speaking to mutually avoid each other, which had seemed the healthiest thing at the time, but now that Nicky was going to rehab, or at least expressing interest, Joe was suddenly very grateful that Booker was inexplicably there.

“You do know that he’s been picking the lock,” Nile said as an aside to Joe. “For at the last three months.”

“Why has nobody told me how he is getting into my own house,” Joe protested, “I feel like that’s a safety hazard.”

Book had straggled into the kitchen and pulled Nicky tightly into his arms, whispering some sort of French platitudes into his hair. Nicky was crying, great gulping sobs, and it felt rude to watch them embracing. Nile turned pointedly on her stool so that her back was too them, and Joe quickly followed suit.

“I thought you knew,” she said, “I figured it out a few months in.”

“I didn’t! I’m always the last one to know, it seems.”

Booker was definitely crying now as well. Joe reached over and held Nile’s hand tightly under the counter. She squeezed it, three times. “Let him deal with it, Joe. And I’ll deal with you.”

Joe blew out a great breath at that. “All right,” he said finally. “He and Book can take that from here.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> drug addiction is difficult to talk about, and has as many faces and manifestations as there are people struggling with addiction. the descriptions and actions contained throughout this fic are based entirely on my own experience as well as that of family and friends, which means that these depictions may not align with your personal experiences. if there is anything particularly egregious, however, please feel free to, as always, leave a comment and i will make the appropriate revisions as quickly as possible. 
> 
> if you are going through anything like this - it sucks. [here](https://www.samhsa.gov/find-help/national-helpline/) is a hotline for drug addiction and [here](https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/%22) is a hotline for suicide prevention, both within the United States. additionally, if you live in the United States or Canada, you can dial 211 and be connected to a plethora of community resources.


	6. empathetic concern

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this stunning rendition of Nile is courtesy of the marvelous [andromachete](https://andromachete.tumblr.com/).

[](https://www.flickr.com/photos/191813101@N02/50896788738/in/album-72157718119454578/)

Nile’d had a shitty year.

Not all of it was bad. She was making good progress on her thesis, and now she was close enough to the end that the idea of ‘Doctor Freeman’ didn’t seem completely ridiculous. (Pretty ridiculous, but not completely.) She had a pretty nice place, even if it had been occupied by at least double the amount of people that were on the lease since sometime last year, and – yeah, that wasn’t as nice as she’d thought. She liked having Quýnh stay, it was nice and like having a sleepover every night, which was something that she’d thought she’d completely lost the novelty of back as a teenager. When Quýnh was around she felt like a teenager again, but with only the good parts. It was nice having someone else to sleep with in her bed – it was big and comfy but it wasn’t like anyone else was jumping into bed with Nile. She’d have felt weird about bringing anyone over, anyway, what with Booker passed out drunk on their couch or their chair half the time, and Andy sitting doing something that looked menacing, even if it was just reading a book or something, the other half of the time. 

Yeah. This year had been shit.

Nile wasn’t a stranger to feeling like an imposter, she felt it more often than she’d like at school, especially in pursuit of her doctorate, but after Lykon had died, she’d almost started to feel like a stranger in her own house due to just the sheer amount of grief and emotion and bodies occupying it. And it was her house, after all – she’d signed the lease, along with Joe, and they’d been the only two to move in and make the apartment their own.

Two years ago she’d met Andy first, when Andy had blown smoke in her face as she was entering the nail salon. Quýnh had yelled at Andy and insisted they take her out to apologize, only would Nile mind very much if she came with them, and they’d already made plans but it would be Andy’s treat due to Andy’s unthinkable rudeness (Andy had rolled their eyes at this, and continued to mutter under their breath with the same amount of rudeness), and really, Quýnh would like it so much if Nile would come. And so Nile had pulled out her phone and dashed out some generic excuse to her Tinder date, which she hadn’t really wanted to go on, anyway, and followed Quýnh and Andy to some dingy diner where four guys were sitting arguing in three different languages, and that was it for Nile. They were half of her family now.

Nile had plenty of friends, but that group kept showing up at weird times, especially Lykon and Joe. They were clearly – it seemed rude to call them troublemakers, but that was the best way Nile could think to describe them, and every time she saw them pop up outside her lecture hall or flag her down from across a coffee shop, they always had these shit eating grins on their faces and looped one arm each through each of hers and dragged her off to their next adventure. Nile loved them all, of course she did, but she really hit it off with those two guys, and when Joe mentioned that his lease was up in June and he was looking to move closer to work, which was conveniently also closer to Columbia, it just made sense for them to move in together.

She and Lykon slept together a couple of times. (Probably more than a couple of times.) Nile couldn’t help it, the sex was good and he was a nice guy. She and Joe had once tried out of morbid curiosity, but they’d barely even started a half-hearted make out session in the corner of a club before they both doubled over laughing, so it clearly wasn’t meant to be between them. However, they both clocked people watching them with jealous interest, and after increasingly theatrical kisses and Joe practically yelling that he was going out for a smoke, both he and Nile went home with separate people. They coordinated their Ubers so that they didn’t run into each other going into the apartment, then texted back and forth in the morning so that they’d both come out of their rooms at the same time and scare their mediocre hook ups.

She loved Joe so much. She hated what he’d been through.

She’d somehow been the second one to get to the hospital the day that Lykon died, and by the time she got there, Joe was clearly already messed up about whatever he’d had to see. Nicky was pretty badly banged up, which couldn’t have helped settle his nerves, but Nile found out later that they’d had Joe formally identify Lykon’s body. They hadn’t showed him any pictures of anything really horrible, but just looking at photos of Lykon’s body, stripped of all humanity and life and everything that made him Lykon – yeah. Nile was so glad she hadn’t been asked to do that, and also not surprised in the least that it had done a number on Joe.

Later, much later, two weeks later, after Nicky got out of the hospital and the funeral was done and dusted and everyone had imploded and moved into her apartment, because Joe was a magnet for all of them but also coped with trauma by caring for them all, she and Nicky had been lying on her bedroom floor late at night, staring up at the glow in the dark stars she’d put on her ceiling last week when sleeping alone in the pitch black seemed like too much to ask for.

“Tell me what you saw, Nicky?” she’d asked, and he had.

She didn’t know in hindsight if that had hurt him, if that was something that had sent him off the edge. He’d told her that every time he slept, though, he had nightmares about it, and that if he wasn’t careful, he’d see Lykon around corners during the day, so she didn’t think that him recounting what he saw had hurt him any more than shit like that already did.

In the end, it made her feel much better to know what had happened. Maybe it was selfish to make Nicky relive that again, but he was already constantly reliving it inside his head, and it helped to know that he’d been there, that he’d held Lykon’s hand. That Lykon hadn’t been alone.

And now, for better or for worse, it seemed like potentially the shit year was coming to a close, or at least they were moving forward, because everyone was back. They were all home. Andy and Quýnh were holed up in Nicky’s apartment having alone time to figure out their relationship, Nicky was off at rehab, Booker was getting his new apartment set up for a home visit for his custody case. And somehow, for the first time in almost a year, it was just her and Joe. That was where they’d started all of this, and now, it seemed almost fitting that that was how it was going to end.

“It’s really quiet without the rest of them,” she said over dinner. Joe’s eyes snapped up to her and – he looked rough. He’d looked rough for a while now. “I miss them.”

“Yeah, I never thought this apartment would feel too big.” He smiled at her but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. She reached over and squeezed his hand three times. She’d done that with all of them after Lykon died, she’d told them that when her own dad died and she or her brother or her mom got too overwhelmed to talk, they’d made up the code. Every time they held hands, three squeezes. _I love you_.

“He’ll be back soon,” she said. She couldn’t really think of how else to reassure Joe. She squeezed his hand three times, again.

“If only the only person I had to worry about was Nicky,” Joe said wryly. “Perhaps I might get some peace.”

“Oh?”

“You’re so goddamn young.”

“I am literally four years younger than you,” Nile said. “Not that young.”

“I don’t know you have so much energy, though, I feel like – fuck, I can’t even get out of bed some days.”

“Yeah, you’ve had a shit hand of it recently,” Nile said. “Maybe you should go to the doctor.”

“I already have a doctor,” Joe said flatly, leveling her with a stare.

“I mean a head doctor. A psychiatrist.”

“What for?” Joe legitimately seemed baffled by this suggestion, which meant that Nile really had dropped the ball on this. She knew the type of person Joe was, because she also was like that. It was easy to try and prop everyone else up, but someone else still had to look after the person that was working to keep them all upright. She was the one who was going to look after Joe, now, because nobody else was able to do it.

“Because shit sucks,” Nile said, “but also, I can still get out of bed in the morning. I do a lot of therapy. They can get you meds, you can go to a therapist. You have to take care of yourself, Joe, people rely on both of us way too much for you to fall apart now.”

“Ugh,” he said, but then he squeezed her hand back. Three times. “Yeah, all right. I’ll go. One thing, though – I think you need to talk to Book.”

And yeah, that was…Nile definitely needed to talk to Booker. She didn’t know what was going on there but she had a feeling that things were starting to get a little bit out of hand, and she loved him, of course she did, he was one of her dearest friends, but she’d lost control of that situation entirely. She was 29 and finishing her Ph.D. He was 42 and had three children, and they needed to be on the same page, so Nile texted him that night and asked him to meet up for coffee the next day. Gone were the days when Book would appear randomly, now he actually had to be summoned.

Nile picked the busiest table in the middle of the coffee shop and got there fifteen minutes before she’d said she’d meet him, just so she could get everything set up. She wanted this to go as painlessly as possible, but it wasn’t exactly painless to break someone’s heart.

“Nile!” She waved him down, greeted him with a kiss on each cheek.

“I already ordered for us, I figured I knew what you get by now?”

He looked a little bit awed by that, and yeah. This needed to get figured out.

“So what did you call me here for? A neutral location?” He was nervous, but he also looked good. He’d showered, which used to be a pretty rare occurrence, and he was actually wearing cologne, although he’d clearly stolen that from Nicky. Nile would take what she could get.

“How are the kids?” she asked instead. “How’d the home visit go?”

“It was as good as it could be,” Booker said, waving it off, “the boys are excited. I could not ask for a better chance in court, the therapy has helped, and of course you have all helped immensely, I am very hopeful.”

“That’s amazing,” Nile said sincerely, and took a sip of her coffee, steeling herself. She really didn’t want to have this conversation. “I asked you here because I…wanted to talk about us.”

“Us?”

Better to just get it over with. “I know you have feelings for me,” she said. “And I – I’m sorry. With the boys coming back into your life I just wanted to make sure we were clear, so there isn’t any more chaos for them. But I don’t feel that way, and I don’t think I ever will. I love you very much, but it – we are too different, Book. Our lives are too different, and I don’t think it would work.”

Booker looked – well. He’d probably have been less astonished if she’d just gotten up and decked him in the middle of the coffee shop. “And I thought I was being so careful,” he said wryly.

“I really don’t want to lose you,” Nile said. “Am I going to lose you?”

He looked at her for a long, long moment, then slowly picked up her hand and pressed a careful kiss to the back of her knuckles. She felt like she was going to cry. “I will be here,” he said, “for as long as you will have me. And I am sure the boys will love their Aunt Nile just as much as I do. If that is okay, of course! I would not want to presume - ”

“Absolutely, okay, I have all these cool ideas of stuff we could take them to do - ”

Yeah. They’d be okay. This year had been shit and it wasn't getting better, not really. It was getting easier.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my friends, i will see you at the epilogue!


	7. epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so i wrote this very quickly just this evening, because after all the revisions and posting everything etc etc it just did not feel completed in the way that i would like, and then i realize that, like a fool, it was because i had no andy. so here is a very brief andy, illustrated, as always, by [andromachete](https://andromachete.tumblr.com/). please send them good wishes and many thanks for the incredible work they have done on such a short timespan for this fic!

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/191813101@N02/50897620687/in/album-72157718119454578/)

“My heart,” Quýnh said, hooking her chin over Andy’s shoulder, “what is on your mind?”

Booker had taken them all out to lunch with his kids. The youngest seemed to have inherited his affinity for Nile and was following her everywhere. Nile was being remarkably patient. Joe had the other two entertained with some story he was probably pulling out of his ass, and the eyes Nicky was making at him were actually a little bit nauseating. Book looked happier than they’d ever seen him, having those kids around had made his face light up.

Andy loved them all so much. They didn’t say shit like that to people very often, they didn’t think they needed to, but…

“Do you think,” they said, craning their head around to give Quýnh a brief kiss, “that I should tell them all that I love them more often?”

Quýnh looked at them and then burst out laughing. Andy was a little bit hurt by that, but then they started laughing too, because yeah, it was a little bit ridiculous.

“They know, my heart,” Quýnh said. “We all know.”

“Yeah,” Andy said. Nile looked over at the two of them and rolled her eyes, she’d started calling them ‘disgustingly cute’ and Andy wasn’t protesting it because yeah, they were pretty cute together, but nothing about Quýnh or their relationship could ever be disgusting. “You make me think about doing shit like that, though. Letting people know how much I love them and everything.”

“I am deeply touched, my heart,” Quýnh said, clearly trying not to laugh. “But you don’t need to change yourself on my account. They know you love them.”

Andy looked over the group again. They were a mess, really. It hadn’t been a year since Lykon died and they all still felt like shit, Andy knew that much. It sucked that he wasn’t around, but they were all there, and they were getting through it. And they were alive, which wasn’t something Andy was in the habit of taking for granted. Not anymore.

“Yeah,” Andy said again. “Yeah, I think they do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this has been quite the experience - i haven't done a big bang in many, many years, so many thanks to the organizers and the incredible people who have helped me so much with this! 
> 
> as always, i do my best in terms of research and preparation for my writing, but doing my best also does not necessarily mean that i have done enough in terms of accurate representation. if you find any errors, no matter what size, and decide to use some of your precious emotional time and energy to correct me, i will be a) honored and humbled that you have chosen to do so and b) make the appropriate revisions as quickly as possible.
> 
> this is a very personal story and as i was writing it, some of the things i have described here ended up having not as happy of an ending. so this is for Zeddy who was unfortunately lost to drug addiction and suicide, like so many before him and so many who will come after him. and again, as always, thank you, my friends, for your kindness, your support, and your love.


End file.
